


everything is grey (he is blue)

by alistaira (Velairena)



Category: ACCA13区監察課 | ACCA 13-ku Kansatsuka
Genre: M/M, Politics, dark! jean - Freeform, guilty! jean, lotta is just a bystander watching everything unfold lol, masochist! nino, sciopath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 14:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10969461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velairena/pseuds/alistaira
Summary: 「you're ripped at every edge,but you're a masterpiece.」Long before when he first met the boy with navy hair and azure eyes, Jean Otus had felt his gaze.「 you're dripping like a saturated sunrise.」inspired by «Color» from the artist Halsey.





	everything is grey (he is blue)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wan (kuro49)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/gifts), [mousapelli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/gifts), [TheColorBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/gifts).



> 「you're ripped at every edge,  
> but you're a masterpiece.」-- Nino.
> 
> 「 you're dripping like a saturated sunrise.」 -- Jean.
> 
> Some of the lines come from my other fanfic, «Song Like You», so I guess you could think of this as a better, updated, final draft of the original storyline?? 
> 
> Ah, I don't know why I wrote this. I was honestly inspired by the author of «red herring» and the author of «Cheat Code» as well as the author of «Clipped Wings» all are acca-13 one-shots. Red Herring was really the first taste of Dark! Jean I had, and I was just wondering why I didn't find it earlier. Jean is perfect for a darker, more cunning persona with his cautious nature, enigmatic talks and emotionless/careful(?) facial expressions. Honestly, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Jean was actually pulling strings for everything all along like — that time he just turned and caught Nino's eyes through the binoculars in Epi. 5. That's what really pulled me into the ship. 
> 
> And Cheat Code, I really love how the fic portrayed Nino; always too cautious, too afraid of shattering the only lifeline he's ever had. It's like Nino's own guilty secret-- because he knows that he will never be able to touch Jean without feeling guilty and the weight of his duty down on him. But if Jean doesn't remember, if it is all just like a dream that can be kept as a dream...
> 
> Finally, Clipped Wings. God! This fic hit right here *gives you bloody pieces of torn up heart*. It's been a long time since I enjoyed a fic with so much angst as yours. There were so many emotions and words that they exchanged that I wished was canon. Now, I'll be completely honest. While I am an avid writer of angst-- my usually has happy, uplifting endings. I never really liked those finishes with the same angsty feels as the overall feel of the work because it'd just make me depressed, like in the literal sense.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this! 
> 
> ( If you do, please check out some of my other works as well. )

[Colors -- Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGulAZnnTKA)

[Actual Writing Muse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzq1CJJjQ2g)

He was a child when he first felt those eyes; even back then, without the haze of smoke and the tugs and shoves of the crowd around them. He felt those eyes; scrutinizing and dangerous, yet so familiar and affectionate at the same time. When he turns, he sees flashes of navy hair in the tall trees out of the corners of his eyes.

But it was until when he was fifteen when he finally managed to put a name and a face to that gaze.

 _Nino_. 

That name is on his tongue for the first night of the start of his high school year.

And they will be, for many more.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _“This suits you far more than it does me, Jean.”_
> 
> _Nino says, casually slinging the crown atop Jean's head, like he's done it many, many times before._

 

He's known he was of royal blood long ago. That was his secret. That was why even after he had sent all those transfer requests that he never heard back from; he was relieved. The people he came in contact with on his business trips; those men, those allies, those phantoms and ghosts, they would be able to protect Lotta if— no, in time— it will eventually happen; when their heritage is finally exposed. 

Jean isn't stupid. He knows that even when only half flows in his veins, he still holds value as a figurehead.

And if it would, too, keep Nino around, it wouldn't hurt. 

Or rather, the only one hurt in the end, would be himself, and him alone.

_They didn't need to be dragged into the sins of his greed and desire._

And so he wraps himself tighter in his cloak of lies and deceit. Burrows deeper into the mist of poison, and deeper into the sea of regrets.

* * *

 To be selfishly selfless, that was the exact type of person Nino was. So complicated yet so simple at the simple time.

 _Oh Nino, never_ k _nowing what he truly wanted. Never realizing that there was a world full of colors and wonders outside, waiting for him._

_If he'd only just set himself free._

But he doesn't, because Jean won't let him. Because he knows that with Jean, he'll never get sloppy seconds, yet he knows that he will never be able to touch Jean without the weight of his duty and honor weighing him down. So all Jean offers him are slivers, pieces of the puzzle he himself has never finished, because that is the only way for him to keep Nino. For him to keep his crown in a golden cage that he will force Nino to love.

Ah, _but that didn't mean a part of Jean didn't want to set his beloved crow free and away from his smoke._

For throughout all his years, those pairs of eyes on his back was the only thing that never changed. 

* * *

Contrary to popular beliefs that smoking dulled ones' senses, his only sharpened more when he was surrounded by the smog; the pulls and tugs of the people around him, the footsteps; sharp ones, carful ones, demanding ones, confident ones, unsure ones. And voices; high, low, tenor, alto, baritone. 

The only times he let down his guard was when he was drinking with Nino. 

His pale features had always made him liable to blushing easily, but he was hardly an emotional man, so that didn't really bother him. However, that function of his was useful during those times he sat at the bar with his crow. Jean was a bad drinker, but he wasn't  _that_ bad. He wasn't  _actually_ drunk off his foot after two cups of beer, and it was always interesting to see Nino's expression when he saw Jean like that: affectionate, exasperate, worried, a combination of the three, or maybe more. Jean wouldn't be guilty if he was the only one Nino showed and felt those emotions for. The way his jaws would clench and his eyes sharpen when Jean gushed about Director General Mauve in their late night drinking sessions.

_( Jean wasn't oblivious to Nino's feelings. No, not really— not even when Nino himself did not understand them. But he understood, he would never be able to reciprocate his dear crow's feelings. Because one day, Jean'll have to set Nino free. And he, the boy wonder, doesn't think he will be able to let go if Nino ever touched him like Jean wanted him to. )_

So for a while, he didn't send those transfer letters. He always visits each district on a whim, and he takes the farthest ones unexpectedly. And so he was able to keep his crow like that: always just one step ahead, yet slowing down for just long enough so Nino could catch up.

But Nino, ever the devoted worker, would always catch up to his schemes, and without realizing it, he began anticipating Jean's moves.

And so Jean would always be thinking of more ways to trap the beautiful bird, to be able to pick the forbidden fruit. Of the ways he would finally be able to pick his  _Takane no Hana_ without being claimed by the sharp edges and jagged ledge of the cliff it has made its throne. 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _“Everything is grey,  
>  His hair, his smoke, his dreams.  
>  And now he's so devoid of color—”_

One night, it tugs him hard in the stomach what he was doing.

He cries. 

It's an ugly night. 

In the morning, he gets up and washes his face like nothing's happened. Except for that whole week, he doesn't touch a cigarette nor the lighter decorated by the red Acca bird Nino had given him so long ago.

Jean just wants to hurt. It's been so long since he's been away from his drug induced dreams. He feels like someone else entirely. But the world is still black and white, and without that grey smoke guiding him. He's more alone than ever; another monochrome figure in that sea of haze. 

So the boy with the face of an angel and a heart darker than the night thinks of the way he can get the crown on his head.

And it begins—

The final game Jean would play with Nino.

* * *

 

He begins preparing for their endgame in Bïrra. 

For the first time since he has noticed Nino's gaze, Jean turns, and through the snow, he catches exactly where he knows those eyes are. And he looks, then turns back and walks into the hotel.

 _It's cruel_ _,_ he knows, to torture Nino like this, and it's selfish too, that he's laying the ground of their final play here, in this pure, white snow that signified innocence.

 _It's ironic,_  Jean notes. Just as he was sinning more in this innocent whiteness, Jean's eyes; that light blue, which signified honesty and trustworthiness, had never been more false. 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _“You’re dripping like a saturated sunrise,_  
>  _You’re spilling like an overflowing sink;”_

The rumors play a part in everything. Jean isn't really bothered by the scrutinizing and calculated gazes on his back, but when he steps out into the open balcony, he's more suffocated than ever. And the voices in his head; the ones tormenting him of the ways he had wanted to touch Nino, to tell him to keep his crow, because Nino was  _his_ , and his alone. 

Jean  _know_ s he's going crazy.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _“You’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece,_  
>  _And now I’m tearing through the pages and the ink.”_

They see each other again in Dōwā, in front of the Yukinotama shop.

_Yuki, pure, white innocence._

They are surrounded by snow again. 

Jean greets him with a nod of his head, and looks at the Nino; dressed in black, with his usual camera with him, and smiling at him. At that moment Jean feels like he just wants to give up the chessboard and pieces he has under him. 

Because even if they stay forever like this; each of them chained to their own worlds, even with each of them shackled by their own sins, because if there are still moments like this; despite everything, even if he has to force himself to only take the tiniest bits from the whole Nino offers to him, but if he can still have Nino's smile, then Jean is willing to give up everything. 

But Jean only looks at his smile, searing it into his brain, under his skin, beneath his eyelids. Because he wants to remember but he also wants to forget. 

Nino takes off his beanie and his scarf, and his hair is messed up and Jean just wants to reach out and smooth it out, but he wraps his fingers around his Acca lighter instead, and asks Nino which one he should get for Lotta.

That day, he meets his grandfather for the first time. 

Falke II is an old man with a pair of out of place, twinkling, blue eyes, and a man beside him; Kuvarum, a stern man with dark, forbidding, the exact opposite of the man he serves. Jean briefly wonders what their story is, before his curiosity stem toward how much the king— his grandfather, knew. Did he know? Did he suspect when he saw Jean's blue eyes, so similar to his own, yet so different without the sparkle that his mother, his cousin and his sister has? Would he know when he saw Lotta, the very copy of their mother, the lost princess?

Jean thinks he knows, because of the melancholy way those eyes shine when he sees Nino taking a picture of him.  

* * *

For the first time in years, he sees Nino drunk again.

The first, and only  _other_ time he's ever seen Nino drunk was when his— no,  _their_ parents died. 

Oh Nino, always keeping in his own pain and hurt and only thinking of others.

They slept together that night.

And all Jean remembers is racing hearts and hammering pulses. The heat of Nino's mouth on his skin, raspy moans, the crumpled, roughness of his sweater clenched into Jean's fist, the calloused hands on Jean's hips. The bitter taste of the wine and the drunken confessions of an intoxicated Nino.

And Jean has his eyes open the entire time; remembering every detail of Nino— every crevice, every scar,  _everything_. Because  _god_ , if he died tomorrow, as long as he still remembered tonight, even in his last moments, he would die a happy man. 

_( And now I’m covered in the colors,_

_Pull apart at the seams. )  
_

* * *

Nino doesn't remember.

Jean only offers Nino a bare smile when he walks into the dinning room complaining about his splitting headache _._

He's confused. Jean notices.

He only shrugs and lies, the heat of the photographs he developed minutes before Nino came sauntering in. Almost hoping that Nino does not notice his swollen mouth and the dark circles under his eyes.

He does, but he nothing, and that is the most infuriating thing. He only stares at Jean, pupils blown wide before a familiar shadow that reminds Jean of last night slithers into them. And cough on his coffee when Jean asked him if there was something else wrong.

It was probably the smell of sex in his sheets, Jean blinks, and involuntarily, reaches into his pocket and fingers those photographs. 

 _This is becoming too much of a habit_ , he realized later. 

So the second he gets home, after greeting Lotta. He closes his curtains and spills those twenty-one photographs— for all the years Jean knew him, and the years he knew Nino was there, acutely aware of the figure who was at the bottom of his apartment building.

* * *

He throws himself into the preparations of the coup d'etat. He feels Nino's gaze in all the districts he visits, but he never turns to see those eyes again. Only focusing on the people he needed to see to make the coup a success, and counting down the days before he has to let his crow go.

Because Jean doesn't know if he could bear it.

If he could bear Nino being able to live without him. Because Jean knows he can't. Not without his crow.

It's funny really. When Nino had first become  _Nino_ , all he ever had been was only Nino. Yet when had that Nino become  _his_ Nino?

* * *

Nino comes to him in Kororë. It's strange, Jean notes, to see Nino so serious. 

Jean doesn't know what to expect from him.

Screams, yells, maybe a punch at the future monarch?

But just how much  _did_ Nino know?

Just how much did he know about the coup, and about Jean?

Nino's eyes, those eyes; those eyes that Jean adored so, were the answer.  _Betrayal, disbelief, suspicion._

And so Jean smiles again. Bittersweet and innocent. 

* * *

The distance between them grows, and with each cigarette, the smoke grows heavier; fear is a fire and the smoke of it, alongside the poison he willingly inhales takes his breath away.

The gazes on his back are only calculating and dangerous this time, Jean thinks. 

The two of them walked parallel lines. Always so near, yet so far away. Forever only a hairbreadth away, yet unreachable all the same. 

* * *

 

Everything.  _Every thing,_ falls apart in Furawaū.

 _That_ was not a part of his calculations. The assassins weren't a part of his calculations, and for a moment Jean thinks that dying like this wouldn't be so bad until a scream of his name, and—

_Him._

A hand seizes the beat of his heart and his eyes are wide and he can't think.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

He is bleeding.

 _Nino_  is bleeding.

* * *

Crows are loyal. The color of his eyes are loyal.

And Jean just wants to scream and rip out his hair.

 _You fool! You should've just let me die!_  

And when he looks at Jean with those weary eyes, he just want to  _stop_ and just tell him to never leave his side.

 _Don't die, don't die, don't die. Be okay, be okay, be okay be okay._ _**I love you!** _

But it is too late to back out, because of the fact that Jean loves him. He will let him go. 

The bouquet of blue irises and white lilies drop from his hand and onto the floor.

_Hope, and devotion._

His and his mother's.

Their stories are the same.

The princess sets her knight free.

But he is never free. 

Nino is the same.

Jean turns. And he feels the panic rising from Nino. 

**_Don't go._ **

And it's a surprise because he wants to sob again, but all he does is kick the flowers under the hospital bed and staining the sterile floors with ruined petals. 

 _It will end, soon._ He promises himself. And when he's outside he allows just one look at the figure lying by the window. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>   _“You were red, and you liked me because I was blue,  
>  But you touched me, and suddenly I was a lilac sky.  
>  Then you decided purple just wasn't for you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> *Shrieks*
> 
> I ACTUALLY DELETED THE FIRST VERSION LIKE  
> AJSDF, KLFHKJSDKJFJDSFJKLDHAKFLAKSJGJ
> 
> I WROTE ALL OF THIS FROM MEMORY BUT IT JUST DOESNT FEEL LIKE THE FIRST DRAFT  
> GOD I'M SO MAD  
> AH  
> TECHNOLOGY  
> THIS WOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED IF I JUST USED PEN AND PAPER  
> DAMN HIDDEN KEYBOARD FUNCTIONS
> 
> AS.DFHJSK FLSAHFJHSHFOHAENOTFYEUWNCTOVAMIUROPIRHM ILURIUYAENORUMP OWUER IOPUNSIRMSU KLFMORPUOV


End file.
